No market segment is changing faster than communications technology. Products and supporting technologies advance at warp speed, the competitive dynamics are constantly shifting, and business itself continues to morph with mergers and acquisitions announced almost monthly.

In such an environment, the traditional approach to corporate training often isn’t practical. Time-to-market pressures, highly technical and specialized content, and the short “shelf life” of information makes rapid e-learning the perfect solution for much of Alcatel’s training.

Jo-Ann Killinger, director of Alcatel University in North America, has been a champion of rapid e-learning for several years. “With rapid e-learning, we remove the roadblocks to providing timely training, plus we maximize our own staff resources,” she said. “We can reduce the time for course development and delivery by 65% or more. A course that might have required 40 to 60 hours of development time takes less than a day with rapid e-learning. And since time is money, our development costs have decreased just as dramatically.”

As Killinger defines it, rapid e-learning is the creation of short, online courses or modules, usually an hour or less in length. Subject topics vary widely, from workplace safety and business ethics to hardware configurations; audiences include Alcatel North American employees and channel partners. Typically, subject matter experts–such as corporate lawyers, product managers, or sales specialists - provide the course content in the form of PowerPoint presentations. Killinger’s training team provides overall design guidance, edits the course notes, adds voiceovers, incorporates quizzes and learner checkpoints, and ultimately publishes the courses.

Two of the tools behind this process are Articulate Presenter and Articulate Quizmaker, both now in use at Alcatel for more than a year. Articulate Presenter creates Flash-based e-learning courses with narration and interactivity from PowerPoint presentations. According to Killinger, most subject matter experts have learned to use the tool and its templates in one to three days. Articulate Quizmaker creates Flash-based quizzes, assessments and surveys.

The courses developed by Articulate are certified for SCORM 1.2 and 2004, important since Alcatel has adopted SCORM as a standard for all e-learning content globally.

Killinger’s team has now worked with SMEs to produce approximately 109 courses in North America alone using Articulate Presenter. Alcatel has an enterprise license for both Articulate Presenter and Quizmaker. According to Killinger, use of the tools throughout the company, including its international business units, is growing constantly.

The last year has given Killinger unique insight into the culture and process changes that need to occur in order to successfully incorporate rapid e-learning into corporate learning programs. “While these tools make content authoring easy, to be effective, you’ve got to revise many existing processes and create new ones to support their use,” she said.

Following are just a few of the lessons learned by Killinger and her team:

The roles of traditional course developers and instructional designers will likely need to change. “One of the biggest shifts that needed to be made was in the minds of our course developers,” said Killinger. “With rapid e-learning, course developers needed to shift their roles and focus more on facilitation. They become advisors more than doers.” In many cases, this change in responsibility givesKillinger’s team more time to focus on working with business units to define learning objectives, challenges, and strategies.

• Develop standardized templates to ensure the consistency of developed courses and expedite the development process.

• Don’t take unnecessary shortcuts. For instance, Killinger’s team members take the time to write voiceover scripts, rather than “winging it.” The time required to write a script is almost always less time than that required to do multiple takes.

• Provide centralized, expert services to enhance courses, to oversee the publishing process, and to provide assistance in tracking.

• Provide training to SMEs on the tools and development process. While tools such as Articulate are very easy to learn and use, basic training in the use of the tools, course templates, and the overall development process can eliminate unneeded frustration and improve outcomes.

“Traditional training and development is evolving into workplace learning, which is part of everyone’s job—not just the training department’s,” Killinger said. “Rapid e-learning, if managed properly, will help facilitate this essential transition withincorporations.”